


Grounding Touch

by riot3672



Series: Reylo [3]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Ghosts?!, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Oral Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Solves a Mystery, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Throne Room Scene, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:42:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21880396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riot3672/pseuds/riot3672
Summary: After the Battle of Exegol, Rey secludes herself to Tattooine to be alone, to process the last few years of her life, and search for the one person she vowed to never leave behind, whatever the cost.(If you didn't guess, this has TROS spoilers.)
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/895146
Comments: 7
Kudos: 148





	Grounding Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Hey Reylo fam! As much as TROS didn't give an easy out for my one last installment in my vaguely connected smut series, I figured we could add a little fix-it fic into this year's story. Promise, this one will have a happy ending (and maybe even a plot?!). ;)

I.

Rey thought she was done being afraid of being alone. Afraid of the kind of silence she could count her heartbeats and listen to the blood rushing through her ears grow faster as the thought stuck that she couldn’t control what kept her alive. Afraid of the routines she’d get into, counting the tallies on her walls, mentally drawing mountains she could never visit out of the different heights of the lines. Picking up a handful of sand and wondering if she could grow bored enough to count them all, knowing she’d always stop before she hit a hundred thinking about her parents.

But Luke said that confronting fear was the way of the Jedi. And confronting fear didn’t stop with facing down a monster like Snoke or Palpatine. Being a Jedi was something she did every day, slotting herself into situations where every second was fighting back fear.

Rey Skywalker feared being alone. Even with Finn and Poe and Rose and Chewie, even with the sounds of victory parties still echoing across the galaxy, she still feared being alone.

So she exiled herself here. She’d call it other things to different voices behind transmissions. _Connecting with my roots_. _Secluding myself for some peace. Training._

But it was none of that. Behind all the Skywalker legends, all Tattooine was was empty. The perfect place to be alone.

The perfect place to convince herself that she wasn’t alone.

Tears burned her eyes as she sat cross legged in what was once Luke’s aunt and uncle’s kitchen. The stone table in front of her was barely more than a stool to put her feet. She couldn’t hold the position long, tucking her legs to her chest as she held her eyes shut.

Force life was transference. Force life was sliding souls through corridors in the Force, and souls were eternal. Yes, Ben had given Rey his life force. But there was no way he’d given her his soul. And for the first few weeks, she’d searched for him, searched for a force ghost with his tousled black hair, with his soulful brown eyes, with his trembling lips.

She couldn’t, though.

 _Ben_ , she called out through the Force. After years of hiccuping blasts into each other’s minds, the space in her thoughts felt hollow, ransacked. _I know you’re out there_.

None of the Jedi texts talked about this. If a piece of Ben was still out there, what was she calling for? She’d never even fully mastered how to connect them through the Force when he was alive. What could possibly call him back now? What could she give him that could ever match to the body she watched disappear with the touch of his lips still warm on hers?

Her mind fell back, though, to that kiss. No matter how much she wanted to focus today. It’d been so long ago, not that she was keeping track of time well out here. It had happened so long ago, yet she could still feel him. She’d imagined the sensation of lips for long, longer than she’d ever admit to her friends. They were soft, they enveloped hers, they’d tipped her into a white world without the ships blasting above them, without the hoods and blood and rock under their tender limbs. But there’d been one thing that had grounded her. His lips had tipped up as he kissed, the slightest twitch of lost control.

She hadn’t just tasted his mouth, the salty tears or the grit of dirt and blood. She’d tasted his _smile_. She’d tasted his freedom, his happiness, his complete and utter relief. It was a flavor she could never forget. Because she’d had the same silly, sweet taste in her mouth in those fleeting seconds.

 _I love you,_ their lips had said. _You are loved. You are loved and you will never not be loved again_.

She knew her friends and Luke and Leia loved her. But this had been different.

Rey opened her eyes, running her tongue over her teeth. She sighed and filled a cup of water. A dribble fell through the corner of her lip, dropped onto her thigh.

Her and Ben had always met in water. In the rain, in the snow, in that cave. It was actually hard to imagine what Ben’s face looked like when he wasn’t damp in some way. Tears, sweat, water. It made her smile in the emptiness of Luke’s house on Tattooine. Ben Solo was always wet. Face damp, his hair sticking to his face.

He’d even had his hair stuck to his face like a flustered child when he’d held his hand to her the first time. When she’d wanted nothing more to grab it. When the buzz had teemed down to her bones, her stomach a rock anchored inside of her begging her limbs to move.

She hadn’t wanted him to say what he’d said. And of course it was because of her parents. But it was something else too.

A part of her, God, she could still remember the feeling like an old piece of clothing, that was battle soaked, energized, raw. They’d fought so well. They’d fought so in synch. Their chests had heaved together, sweat dripping down their hairlines together, skin grazing as lightsabers flew from fingertips.

She’d seen it in his eyes. The hunger, the desire, the _need_ to block out the pain with something white hot and brand new. And she’d seen his eyes as the perfect dark little mirrors they were, reflecting that same feeling back at her.

She hadn’t wanted him to speak at all that day.

Heat puttered to Rey’s skin, fingertips the first to ignite.

She recognized a world where he hadn’t spoke that day. Where as the curtains burned to ash around them, they’d embraced, mouths finding mouths, shaking fingers waving into each other’s hair. He pulled her all the way down, dropping the tie with a soft, unceremonious clack onto the hard floor. She ran her fingers from the nape of his hair along his skull, knotting her in the cool hair.

His lips were still warm. His lips were still soft. When his fingers fell onto the back of her neck, the grip was soft. Like no matter how much he wanted to yank and demand, he could never do that to her. And Ben couldn’t. Not even Ben in Kylo Ren’s skin. And as much as Rey tugged on Ben’s hair, coaxing a sharp groan in the space between their lips, Rey couldn’t pretend she was still that Rey Nobody, who wanted to hurt Ben as much as she wanted to love him.

She just wanted to love him. To have him to love him, to make him feel loved for minutes instead of seconds.

She dropped onto Snoke’s throne. Cold, cold like stone in Palpatine’s lair. Ben ripped his lips from hers, a hand snaking under her shirt as his lips grazed down the skin of her neck. He pressed his lips to the soft spot where her throat met her collarbone as he touched her breast, gently freed it from the wrap.

“Rey,” he whispered, his voice a rumble in his throat.

Ben didn’t say her name often, but this cadence, this dip and rise wasn’t familiar to her. But she sunk into it as a sigh escaped her lips.

The throne was cold, even colder as Ben drew his hands and mouth away from her torso, long, elegant fingers pulling her pants below her knees. It was cold here, damp. She could hear the drip inside a cave, inside Palpatine’s lair. She could hear the blasters on ships above them. The warm of Ben’s lips, the way he held her and she knew she’d never have to leave.

Then his lips pressed between her legs, still over her underwear. But God, she gasped, bucked against his mouth. A puff of a laugh escapes him, warm and sending her hairs up on end. “I never thought this would happen,” he said.

“I always hoped it would,” she replies, her voice like an instrument. She’d never thought of herself that way.

“Is it okay?”

She exhales. “Yes.”

He kisses her again, again, once more before her underwear drops too, slicked to the touch. And when his lips touch her skin, it’s like a world class ship firing to life. Her body shook, her vision blurred at the edge. Unsteady, the stone beneath her hard, everything so fleeting, fleeting it hurt her eyes to think about.

“Keep a hand on me,” Rey said.

He settles his non-dominant hand on her thigh. She snakes her hand down, puts it over his. Slides her fingers into the grooves between his, grips on like a baby bird.

“I need to know this is real,” she said.

“It is,” he assures her, his baritone against the teeming nerves of her skin.

He runs circles, he winds and twists like an artist. Like a fighter, like the fighter she never wants to not fight beside. And the feeling, it’s an addiction, it’s unstoppable, it devours every nerve in her body. Muscles growing taut, straining against a growing pressure. Head swimming. Her vision blurring a little again. Mouth growing dry, the surface too hard. Soft lips, limp bodies, Palpatine—

Rey squeezes her eyes shut, opening them again. Ben. Ben with the tousled black hair. Roguish Ben. She reached down and tangled her hand into his hair.

And as he drew his circles, faster and faster, she twisted her fingers into his hair. Tighter and tighter they went. He was soft, he was messy, he was hot. He was alive.

She yanked up on his hair as the pleasure came exploding out of her. A moan, a tortured, heated sound shot out his mouth. It pulled his face up to hers. And there it was. No scar on his face. That smile. That pure, loving smile. That—

Rey opened her eyes.

She wasn’t in Snoke’s throne room. She wasn’t in Palpatine’s lair. She was in Luke’s home, on Tattooine.

The tears finally fell as the last pulses of pleasure echoed away. Her hands were clean, but exhaustion was setting in quickly. She didn’t have time to figure it out.

But there _was_ something wrong with her hands.

She had something tangled in her fingertips.

A single black hair.


End file.
